and we anticipate and hope the senate will act quickly to confirm him and put him in place in the pentagon. >> in terms of the way he answered various questions, i know you took issue with the tough question style of republican senators. is the white house pleased with how senator hagel answered questions? >> i believe he did a fine job. if you look, if you take all the news clips, not the whole performance, but the news clips that have dominated television report and on this, they have focused on a series of exchanges that i think, by any estimation, largely represent the injuring over issues like, why did you disagree with me over iraq? we are prepared to say that senator obama had a view on iraq. it was one of the reasons he ran on that position and one in 2008 against senator mccain. he vowed to end the war in iraq in a with a protected our national security interests. now, he is focused on winding down the war in afghanistan. someone bizarrely, and given that we have 56,000 americans in uniform in afghanistan, senators yesterday, in a hearing for the nomination of the secretary of def